Helen Gillet's many cello-led projects are as compelling as they are diverse. A gifted improviser, she's as adept at soaring, unmapped jazz as she is at weepy, traditional French chansons. At a recent Velvet Underground tribute, her lengthy interpretation of "Heroin" did classically trained viola player John Cale proud with its agile transitions between wrenching dissonance and dreamy, druggy sweetness.

At the Bingo Parlour today, Gillet led an ensemble consisting of harp, sax, violin, drums and of course, cello, through a haunting set that incorporated her beloved, traditional French cabaret music as well as dark improv and a cover of Ben Harper's "Waiting on An Angel" that was as strong and delicate as a cello string; she steered the band masterfully between hard and soft, tense and soaring. In the afternoon sun, the crowd was rapt, dizzy and a little emotionally spent.

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Over on the WWOZ/SoCo Stage, Alvin Youngblood Hart's trio battered fans with an intense, at times apocalyptic set of buzzy, sludgy jams with tinges of dark reggae and Band of Gypsies-style psychedelia. His sparking, rolling-thunder blues-rock recalled the dark, intense power of serious-as-a-heart-attack masters like James Blood Ulmer. In short, he's a monster. His version of "In My Time Of Dying," toward the end of the set, was a fuzz-guitar epic, yet done lightly enough for the crowd to be able to really hear the plaintive trad-blues skeleton that so many acts have heaped tons of heavy-as-Led flesh on.

To close, he debuted a new cut, "Where The Fun Is:" lyrics to the second verse included the sentiment. "I ain't got time to play/ so if I have your attention?" He clearly did not - and did.